ROME — A person smashed a sculpture by Chinese language artist and activist Ai Weiwei throughout the personal opening of his exhibition within the northern Italian metropolis of Bologna, in an act of vandalism that the present’s curator described Tuesday as a “reckless and mindless act.”
The massive blue and white “Porcelain Dice” was a part of the exhibition “Who am I?” inaugurated at Bologna’s Palazzo Fava on Saturday.
Italian media reported that native police arrested a 57-year-old Czech man, who mentioned he was an artist. He was recognized for focusing on vital artistic endeavors prior to now.
It’s nonetheless unclear how the person gained entry to Friday’s invitation-only occasion, however the museum confirmed that the exhibition opened to the general public as deliberate on Saturday.
In line with the artist’s needs, the work’s fragments had been lined with a material and eliminated. They are going to be changed by a life-sized print and a label explaining what occurred.
Ai shared CCTV footage of the assault on his Instagram account, which confirmed the person hanging across the work earlier than transferring out of the blue behind it and pushing it in order that it smashed on the gallery ground.
The person then held a damaged fragment in a gesture of triumph earlier than the museum’s safety blocked him, pulling him onto the ground.
Ai himself is understood across the globe for making artistic statements destroying art work. One in every of Ai’s most well-known items, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, (1995)” captures the artist as he drops a 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn, permitting it to smash to the ground at his ft.
“The act of vandalism towards Ai Weiwei’s work ‘Porcelain Dice’ is much more surprising after we contemplate that a number of of the works on show discover the theme of destruction itself,” mentioned the exhibition’s curator Arturo Galansino.
“The destruction that Ai Weiwei depicts in his works is a warning towards the violence and injustice perpetrated by these in energy, and has nothing to do with this violent, doubtlessly harmful, reckless and mindless act,” he added.
Galansino described the attacker as “an routine troublemaker in search of consideration by damaging artists, works, monuments and establishments.”
